New Books in Art

Apr 01 2025 918 ep. 54 mins 1.6k
New Books in Art Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Art about their New Books

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Sinem Arcak Casale, "Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Apr 01 2025 71 mins  
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi’ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in

Sarah Bassett, "Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Mar 31 2025 80 mins  
How do we best see and understand the art of late antiquity? One of the perceived challenges of so doing is that this is a period whose visual production has been defined as stylistically abstract and emotionally spiritual, and therefore elusive. But this is a perception which – in her path-breaking new book – Sarah Bassett boldly challenges, offering two novel lines of interp

"Micaiah Carter: What's My Name" (Prestel, 2023)

Mar 20 2025 39 mins  
Over the past decade Micaiah Carter has established himself as one of the most exciting and admired young photographers working in the field of portraiture and fashion. With a vision all his own, Carter's images are preternaturally sophisticated. His lighting is intentional but not attention-seeking, and his subjects always seem fully themselves, whether he’s photographing a cele

Rahul Rao, "The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2025)

Mar 19 2025 60 mins  
From Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond, statues have become sites of resistance and contestation of our imperial past and postcolonial present. The Psychic Lives of Statues by Rahul Rao offers an insightful exploration of these global controversies, demonstrating that beneath their surface lie deeper struggles over race, caste, and the politics of decolonisation. Rao takes readers

Matt Lodder, "Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art" (Yale UP, 2024)

Mar 17 2025 69 mins  
There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the West as a professionalized art practice for centuries. Drawing on extensive new research and unprecedented access to largely unpublished private archives of photographs, art, and ephemera, in Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern A

Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Mar 14 2025 42 mins  
Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters’ complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperia

Michael J. Hatch, "Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840" (Penn State UP, 2023)

Mar 13 2025 96 mins  
In early nineteenth-century China, a remarkable transformation took place in the art world: artists among China's educated elites began to use touch to forge a more authentic relationship to the past, to challenge stagnant artistic canons, and to foster deeper human connections. Networks of Touch is an engaging exploration of this sensory turn. In Networks of Touch: A Tactile Histo

Harriet Atkinson, "Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, 1933-53" (Manchester UP, 2024)

Mar 12 2025 37 mins  
How did exhibitions become a vital tool for public communication in early twentieth century Britain? Showing resistance reveals how exhibitions were taken up by activists and politicians from 1933 to 1953, becoming manifestos, weapons of war and a means of signalling political solidarities. Drawing on dozens of examples mounted in empty shops, workers’ canteens, station ticket ha

Jamie Jelinski, "Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2024)

Mar 10 2025 54 mins  
In 1891 J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating permanent images on the skin of paying clients. From this early example of tattooing as work, in Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) Dr. Jamie Jelinski takes us from coast t

Kirsten L. Scheid, "Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950" (Indiana UP, 2022)

Mar 09 2025 91 mins  
In Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950 (Indiana UP, 2022), Kirsten L. Scheid offers a striking study of both modern art in Lebanon and modern Lebanon through art. By focusing on the careers of Moustapha Farrouk and Omar Onsi, forefathers of an iconic national repertoire, and their rebellious student Saloua Raouda Choucair, founder of an antirepresentation